By Mustafa Haboush
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) - Christians in the Gaza Strip attended midnight mass, a special religious service held at midnight on Christmas eve, at the Church of the Holy Family in the Latin Convent complex in the enclave's center to commemorate the birth of Christ.
Christmas is observed annually on Dec. 25 by Western churches and Jan. 7 by Eastern churches.
However, this year's Christmas is marred by intense Israeli bombing, making midnight mass one of the most violent nights of Israel's war on the Gaza Strip.
Since Oct. 7, the Israeli army has been waging a fierce war on the Gaza Strip, which, as of Sunday evening, has left about 20,424 Palestinians killed and 54,36 others wounded, most of them children and women, in addition to the massive destruction of infrastructure and an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.
Antoine Ayad, one of the participants in the special religious service, told Anadolu that the Christmas celebration this year is "limited to religious rituals only."
"Christmas is a joyous occasion for us, but this year is different. We are facing the worst humanitarian disaster, and we have martyrs, wounded, and church destruction as a result of Israeli (occupied) forces," he added.
"We lost martyrs in the church sanctuary after the Israeli army bombed the Church of St. Porphyrus in the Zaytoun neighborhood about two months ago," he explained.
"Sorrow fills our hearts, and we urge the world to help us overcome the horrors of this war,'' he appealed.
Every year at this time, Palestinians in Gaza City set up a Christmas tree in the Square of the Unknown Soldier, hanging decorations, decorating churches, and distributing sweets.
But not this year as the Christmas tree is missing from squares and roads of Gaza, which are destroyed by the Israeli military.
The most famous church of St. Porphyrus in Gaza was also partially destroyed by an earlier Israeli bombing, and there are no other festive rituals on this holiday.
The previous night, Christmas eve, saw the most intense Israeli airstrikes and shelling across the Gaza Strip, killing and injuring scores of people.
In his Christmas message, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said late Sunday night, "The birth of Jesus Christ comes this year, and the city of birth, Bethlehem, is experiencing a sadness that it has not seen before this day. The occupation forces oppress and kill Palestinian children, snatching their innocent smiles.
"The faces of the living among them, as none of our people, women, men, and the elderly, are spared from this killing, terrorism, attempts at forced displacement, and the destruction of thousands of homes, which reminds us of what happened in the Nakba of 1948."
He added: "I say to our people and to our families who take refuge in the church in Gaza, and who are not spared from the barbarity of the Israeli aggression, and to all the people of Gaza, that your torments, and the torments of our people at home and abroad, will not be in vain, and that the sun of freedom and an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital is coming."
He remarked, "Inevitably, it is just around the corner."
Around 1,000 Christians live in Gaza out of a total population of over two million people.
The Israeli onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with half of the coastal territory's housing damaged or destroyed and over two million people displaced within the densely populated enclave amid shortages of food and clean water.
Palestinian Christians have decided to limit their Christmas celebrations to religious rituals amid the Israeli war on Gaza.
*Writing by Mohammad Sio